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Antonio Reaches for the Big Time

Our very own mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, is being named the Chairman of the Democratic Convention. This is a recognition of his high visibility as a young, dynamic, Hispanic leader in the Democratic Party. Or is it? Maybe it is the utter failure of the Obama White House to see him as we see him.

Yes, to be sure he has energy. He is indeed dynamic and visible and, yes, Hispanic. But as for what Bush Senior called “the vision thing,” not so much. And as for the accomplishment thing? Again he falls short. He falls short of the ideal and even of adequacy.

He came to our mayorship in a blaze of glory. Would he be a skyrocket continuing to soar or a shooting star burning up in a rapid plunge? He fell. He fell to the temptation of nearly every LA mayor. He started thinking too far ahead and forgot the job of actually governing. (Mr. Trutanich, are you paying attention?) Every LA Mayor starts thinking: “I could be governor.” Then, thinking another move ahead, “Wow! I could be president!” Many a fair-haired boy has foundered on these rocky shoals of hubris and ambition–the Scylla and Charybdis of politics.

Add to this the Hollywood factor and all the tinsel and starlight. Thinking he was either JFK or Clinton, he took up with two TV news people (Female). This did diminish his family-values value since he was married at the time. But more than either a moral issue or even judgment, was the symbolism, the indication that he had gone Hollywood.

I wish him well with the next step of his career, but I do fear for the Democratic Party and the failure of the White House to dig deep enough beneath his veneer and find out what his own constituents think of him.
2012 Jonathan Dobrerwww.Dobrer.com

I think you hit the nail on the head Jon. I have attended several parties around town where our illustrious Mayor has been so drunk and loose of tongue that the skeletons must be piling up in his closet. His policy, thus far, has been to simply make more room in the closet!

http://cox.net HL Fleming

What happened to vetting? One one hand the Dems are screaming about amoral values of Repub candidates, on the other, choosing AV to represent the goodness and decency of character to front them? Politics is a dirty, self-serving business, on ALL sides of the aisle.

Paul Lieberman

What’s the big deal?…politicians that screw around are just practicing to screw the public later…let me count the ways: (i) not doing what they promise to do; (ii) feathering their own beds at the expense of the constitutents and the nation. What else is new?

clair voyant

The author is spot on. We need someone that is not running for the next office. Someone not sucking up to the unions and breaking the back of the general fund to support pensions we cannot afford. How on earth did Chicago get voted the most corrupt city in the US over LA? We have the best mayor and council that dirty money can buy. Remember 11% of the voters put him in office.

Jack

He appears to fit the DC mold – no experience, no working for the people, lip service, finding those available to sleep with, and looking to fill ambitions without doing the job he was hired for. What else could you expect?

To chair the DNC is bad on the face of it, not to mention Obama’s lack of judgement, but he’s shown a lot of that in many of his appoints. But for the council of mayors to elect him president is even worse. Don’t they pay attention to what their fellow mayors do, or are they all AVish scumbags?